Don’t you mess with Amarula the elephant

You go visit a reserve in Africa, eager to see wildlife in its habitat. Beautiful. You’re flabbergasted. Everything is a blast… until you get in Amarula’s way. Amarula, one of the largest elephants at the Pilanesberg game reserve, in Africa, overturned a tourists’ car in February, 2011, according to Snopes.

“When I turned a corner there was a [small truck] in the road in front of us. The driver started reversing and stopped next to us. I’m Irish, and he was speaking Afrikaans, but I could make out the word ‘elephant’,” said John Somers. “I tried to reverse, but the back of the car was half off the road in a ditch and in order to get out I would have had to drive forward.

“The elephant came walking down the road. I was afraid of making a noise and turned the engine off.” Amarula was at John’s vehicle by this time. He broke the window on the driver’s side and rubbed up against the car.

“It really seemed to regard the car as a female elephant and was making advances to ‘her’. Carina and I were very nervous, because we could see the elephant was in musth,” said John. Musth is when bull elephants experience a rise in reproductive hormone and become very aggressive.

“When the bull started flipping the car over, my life literally started flashing past before my eyes.”

“The car landed on its roof and we were lying inside it,” said John. Everyone was fine after Amarula’s fit. It’s amazing to see this creature’s strength.